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I've been with the phone company for over 8 years; I've been a techinician for about 4 of those 8 years. I like the tech side of things, always have, but I feel like the "upward mobility" of the phone company isn't what it used to be. I really have no IT or networking skills, but simply telephone, voip, and internet installations and repairs. I mean, it's techinically IT work, but noweher in the same realm or capacity as you guys.

What kind of IT career can I parlay my telecom experience into? Where would you suggest I go from here? I know in the early days every phreak on the planet would love to get access to telco stuff, but these days, it just seems very..."no where". I like tech work, and I feel like having "Big Telco" experience on my resume would be a huge advantage, but I'm not sure it would make me any better than any other guy with certs. Let me know what you I should do.

As someone that did big telco before, leverage what you know. Find a smaller telco and do the VOIP and Data circuits for them. It should give you a chance to learn a few other skills too.

If you're good with VOIP, data routers and data switches, then look more towards network engineering / network tech jobs. Contact houses, and companies are always looking for experience people to do the networking. They'll usually want you to have some kind of OS knowledge too.

Ten years ago, I was doing the same thing for the phone company. Unless you can move to the CO, I&R work is a dead-end. No one in my telecom class is in the industry anymore, mainly to the stress of them treating contractors like migrant workers.

For me, I started doing DSL installs and learning everything I could. I bought the CCNA book and studied my ass off. That got in the door with an ISP where I wear a lot of hats. One of the reasons I was hired was due to my experience with doing telecom work. Installing jacks, switches, routers, wireless, etc is a lot like telecom except that now you have to configure them in addition to installation, not to mention troubleshooting, support and defense.

As for you, it depends on what you want to do. Security, networking, wireless......the choices are endless so you have to pick an area to focus on. Doing a search on monster or careerbuilder will help you narrow your choices. Monster recently had 12 results for CWNA and 215 results for CISSP. While I highly value my CWNA (it was the hardest test I've ever taken), it seems that I should go for the CISSP if I want job security in a down economy. It seems to me that, in a down economy, desperate people are likely to do desperate things, making security certs all the more valuable.

Other areas that are going to explode is LTE and fiber. MPLS is good if you want to try and move up in the phone company. See if they will sponsor some advanced training.

Electrobank,If you're in the UK then wireless and fiber are the way to go. Current plans to extend 3G, roll out 4G and upgrade consumer access speeds means that the companies are going to need technicians